Quotes About Ambition

no man will ever be willing to live a half-life when he has once seen that it is a half-life.

Weak men wait for opportunities, strong men make them.

it is always what we want, not what we have, that claims our attention.

poverty is the open-mouthed hell which yawns beneath civilization, we

Read or Starve. Show me a man who has made fifty thousand dollars, and I will show you in that man an equivalent of energy, attention to detail, trustworthiness, punctuality, professional knowledge, good address, common sense, and other marketable qualities.

He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.

You want to beat Peter? she asked No, he answered Beat the buggers. Then come home and see who notices Peter Wiggen anymore. Look him in the eye when all the world loves and reveres you. That'll be defeat in his eyes, Ender, thats how you win You don't understand he said Yes i do No you don't. I don't want to beat Peter Then what do you want? I want him to love me

We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself a dictator, and died for it.

People will always go. Always. They always believe the can make a better life than in the old world. What the hell, maybe they can.

Nobodys life ever goes according to plan. So why do we keep on planning? Because that's how we know who we are. By what we intend to be. By what we try to become. And fail. I don't say 'fail'. I saw we aim and miss. But we still hit something.

The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it, either. Government office should be received like a child's Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.

Does it help if we're so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what? asked Wang-mu. I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes, said Peter. Then let's do it. That's us in spades.

I could become a businessman and run some big corporation, I'd scramble and maneuver until I was at the top of everything and what would I have? Nothing.

Maybe I will do what I want with my life! The only problem is that I have no idea what I want to do with it.

We have discussed your definition, analyzed its ramifications to a reasonable depth, and accept it, said the expendable. Meaning I gave you what you wanted? Ambition and desire are human traits. You gave us what we lacked.

Once you realize that power will always end up with the sort of people who crave it, I think that there are worse people who could have it than Peter.

If you had any brains, you'd be in a real career, like selling life insurance.

He was a soldier, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn't have known what they meant.

Let me tell you about Ender. He's all about beating the other guys. Not just winning-he has to beat the other guy into the ground or he isn't happy.

Which of them, then, was more detestable? The one who was loathsome by nature, or the one who wanted to be loathsome but hadn't enough ambition to excel at it>

As a child of privilege, no one is your friend. They will claim to be your friends, they will laugh at your jokes and invite you to their parties, but they do not like you. They like your power, they like what you will become someday.

Mark my words, when a government pretends that it is the highest judge of its own actions, the result is not freedom as Jefferson says, but chaos and oppression. When he shuts religion out of government, when men of faith are not listened to, then all that remains is venality, posturing, and ambition.

I think we've taken a step toward something truly magnificent. But humankind almost never forgives true greatness.

Not at all,' said Dom Cristão. 'I think we've taken a step toward something truly magnificent. But humankind almost never forgives true greatness.